1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to commodity image data processors which pick up, store and manage an image of a commodity and recording mediums which contain a commodity image data processing program and image pickup aiding apparatus which aid in the pickup of the image of the commodity.
2. Background Art
Generally, supermarkets pick up an image of a commodity independently, and publicize the commodity by placing its image on an advertisement. Pickup of such commodity image is performed by an expert photographer within a special studio, but its cost is high. Thus, it is necessary for a store clerk to be easily able to pick up an image of a commodity. In order to satisfy such need, an image pickup aiding apparatus has been studied and developed in the past.
In the image pickup aiding apparatus of this type, a commodity is placed within the apparatus body and spotlighted from its side by an illumining device. In this state, an image of a front or top of the commodity is externally pick up by a camera.
However, the spotlight is locally strong. Thus, uneven illumination would occur on the spotlighted side of the commodity and no clear image can be obtained.
In the image pickup aiding apparatus, a camera is fixed by a tripod when the front image of a commodity is picked up. When a top image of the commodity is picked up, the photographer is required to pick up that image with a camera in his or her hand. Thus, this work is troublesome.
The present invention is intended to provide a clear picked-up image with reduced uneven illumination and to easily pick up images of at least two faces of an object as a commodity.
In a commodity managing system which manages picked-up images of objects such as commodities, management of individual commodities include creating and storing a list of commodity management data including codes, names, sizes and weights of commodities for corresponding picked-up images of the commodities.
Such commodity management data are used by a managing party as well as in advertisements, pamphlets, catalogs, etc., or by showing them to clients. Thus, the image of the commodity is required to be picked up well so that its attraction is brought out to a maximum.
Conventionally, in order to create such commodity management data, images of a commodity are picked up by a professional photographer or a person skilled in picking up the image of the commodity, various commodity information on a commodity code, name, size, weight, etc., is manually added to the picked-up image data to thereby obtain a list of those data.
However, it would take much time and labor for even a skilled person to create such commodity management data manually in a real field of commodity sales where many kinds of commodities are handled.
Especially, in a large-scaled store such as a discount store or a supermarket, it is necessary that a non-skilled person such as a part-timer produces such commodity management data. In this case, it further takes much time and labor as well as it is very difficult to pick up images of the individual commodities well like a professional or expert photographer.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a commodity image data processor capable of easily creating commodity management data which includes commodity image data and information items in corresponding relationship, and a recording medium which contains a commodity image data processing program.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a commodity image data processor and program recording medium capable of easily picking up a clear image of commodity with reduced uneven illumination.
The features of the present invention are as follows: When classification data on a commodity whose image is picked up is input by input means and an image of the commodity is picked up by an image pickup device, the image data is stored and managed in correspondence to the input classification data. Thus, according to the present invention, only by repeating input of classification data on various commodities and pickup of the images of the commodities, commodity management data are easily created.
According to one aspect of the present invention, there is provided an image pickup aiding apparatus cooperative with an image pickup device to aid the image pickup device in externally picking up an image of an object placed within a body of the image pickup aiding apparatus, comprising illumining means provided on the side of a front of the body of the image pickup aiding apparatus at a position above the body of the image pickup aiding apparatus and closer to the object than the image pickup device for illumining the object on its front side from above, and moving means for moving at least one of the image pickup device and the object to move an image pickup position of said image pickup device relative to the object.
Thus, according to the present invention, the object is illumined from above on the side of its front by the illumining device positioned closer to the object than to the image pickup device. Thus, when the image of the object is picked up, a clear image is obtained with reduced uneven illumination. At least one of the image pickup device and the object is moved by the moving means, so that the image pickup position of the image pickup device relative to the object is changed. Thus, the images of at least two faces of the object are easily picked up.